Kondois a Japanese
lifestyle celebrity who has the miraculous ability to help
people declutter their homes for good. Her trick? Only
keep things that “spark joy” or make you feel happy, and discard
the rest.

While cleaning my closet, there was one Kondo tip that I was
unable to take to heart: Don't downgrade your clothes to
"loungewear," or things that you might wear to
lounge around your house when you're not in public.

"It seems a waste to get rid of something that is still perfectly
usable, especially if you bought it yourself," Kondo writes in
"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up." "[But] calling them
[loungewear] merely delays parting with clothes that don't spark
any joy."

Kondo herself writes about how she fell into this trap of
demoting clothes she barely wore into loungewear she'd wear
around the house.

"Nine out of ten times I never wore them," she wrote.

She found the same thing was happening with her clients, who
would admit they didn't like the clothes that they had downgraded
to "loungewear." Instead of wearing these items around the house,
they had simply put off the inevitable of having to discard the
clothes later on.

When I read this section of the book, it didn't resonate with me.
So when I started to 'kondo' my closet, a lot of t-shirts and
ill-fitting clothing wound up in my drawer reserved for
loungewear, work out clothes, and pajamas.

I had trouble parting with clothes I didn’t wear out of the house
or that I considered too casual for work. I thought to myself,
"I'll wear this to get groceries on a Sunday" or "This is too
comfortable to give away."

A photo posted by Katrin (@thalia1702) on Mar 27, 2016 at 8:26am PDT on
Mar 27, 2016 at 8:26am PDT

I usually reach for the same pajama sets again and again and I
prefer to look good in my gym clothes since I believe it helps me
want to work out. And as for those Sunday grocery store runs? I'm
putting on clothes that I like rather than my discarded
"loungewear."

90% of what I downgraded to "loungewear" hasn't seen the
light of day and now I find myself battling a full drawer of
clothes I don't wear — precisely the problem I was having
before I kondo'd my closet.

"This time at home is still a precious part of living," Kondo
writes. "Its value should not change just because nobody sees
us."

The entire point of Kondoing your home is to fill your house with
things that make you happy. If only I had listened to Kondo the
first time around.